90 A WIDOWED HEROINE. 



shower before its time; and perhaps we shall be prudent to 

 take their warning and go home too. 



Here we are, again seated by our own fire, such as is 

 always agreeable on an overcast afternoon in early spring; 

 and we are, consequently, in pleasant mood, disposed to be 

 in good humour with, and do justice to, all; with propor- 

 tionate desire to atone for word or deed of unfairness com- 

 mitted towards the meanest creature. Now some such 

 debt of compensation do we owe to that gigantic Wasp, met 

 with in our morning walk, and left, just now, exploring the 

 mouse-hole tunnel. We have been employing, it is true, the 

 last half-hour in recording, with the utmost accuracy, those of 

 its proceedings which met the eye ; but then we have hinted 

 at its purposes, only in accordance with the common and 

 prejudiced notion that Wasps are always after mischief, while 

 we were all the while perfectly aware that our Wasp was 

 bent upon an enterprise, which, however fraught to us with 

 incipient evil, was in itself highly laudable, and worthy, not 

 of an idler or a freebooter, but of a perfect hero, or, more 

 properly, heroine : this great individual being, in fact, of the 

 female sex. 



Now suppose a certain princess, perhaps but recently a bride, 

 to have seen her husband and her servants fall successively 

 around her, the victims of some sweeping pestilence, followed 

 by an earthquake. From a violent paroxysm, she herself sinks 

 into a stupor of grief, from which she awakes to find herself 

 alone. Though it would be easier to die, she must live and 

 bestir herself, not for her own sake, but to uphold the honour 

 of her princely house, which can only, indeed, be preserved 

 from utter extinction by the preservation of the posthumous 

 heir, which she is likely to bring, soon, into his desolate in- 

 heritance. In earnest, therefore, does she arouse her energies, 

 and so much to the purpose are they employed, that she 

 succeeds, at length, by dint of individual exertion, in founding 

 a new city and a new empire, which, peopled by her descend- 



